Other/Mixed Ancient Greek and Roman Exercises

[Kozushi]

I thought this was pretty interesting, considering that we often refer to the physique of ancient statues to make points about weightlifting. The exercises are somewhat familiar and somewhat odd. They seemed to like isometric exercises in particular:

http://www.historical-pankration.com/home/articles/ancient-exercises-from-galen-s-de-sanitate-tuenda

 

[berny]

If you like old training methods you should look for videos of folk wrestlers from iran, turkey, india and pakistan. Keywords: Kushti, Pehlwani, Koshti, Koshti Pahlavani, Kurash, Güreş, Yağlı Güreş. Really cool stuff and you find a lot of exercises from the pankration site. A friend of mine (know him from Judo) is part iranian and has traveled to those countries and he can't praise those guys enough. For a lot of those guys wrestling is more than a sport, it is a way of life and they often life in small communities and focus on wrestling and training 100%.

 

[Kozushi]

If you like old training methods you should look for videos of folk wrestlers from iran, turkey, india and pakistan. Keywords: Kushti, Pehlwani, Koshti, Koshti Pahlavani, Kurash, Güreş, Yağlı Güreş. Really cool stuff and you find a lot of exercises from the pankration site. A friend of mine (know him from Judo) is part iranian and has traveled to those countries and he can't praise those guys enough. For a lot of those guys wrestling is more than a sport, it is a way of life and they often life in small communities and focus on wrestling and training 100%.

Ah, yet again something I'd love to do but it just isn't feasible given I live on the frontier of civilization in North America.

I got super interested in the Iranian wrestlers and their weightlifting style a few years back, which led me to getting interested in their culture, and I started reading the "Shahnameh" - the "Book of Kings" that the wrestlers read. I love it all! They have a martial arts style made up of:
1. wrestling
2. weightlifting
3. dancing
4. reading

Gosh, just VERY COOL! This kind of study made me so jealous but ended up pushing me to find near equivalents in my own North American culture, and I came upon Strongfirst.

 

[Kozushi]

They have I think four different weightlifting tools: a bow, a shield, a club, and one other I forget. They shake the bow, which is very interesting as we don't see shaking used in Western training a lot. The shield is used for pushups and similar. The club is kind of like a kettlebell in a way. Evidently these descend from strength training for ancient battlefields.